Holy Spirit
Yesterday, I said that grace overcomes sin and there is no
In today’s Bible reading, Paul asks the natural follow-up question: If that’s true, then, can’t we just sin it up, knowing that God’s grace is sufficient to cover it? (Romans 6:1)
He responds to his own question by saying that such a thing is unthinkable: How could someone who has been set free from sin’s grasp continue to live in bondage to it? Paul says that believers have died to sin and have been buried, and because of Jesus’ resurrection, we have been raised to walk a new life. In case you missed it, this is where we get the imagery of baptism by immersion.
A few days ago when we looked at Romans 4, I said that Abraham believed God and God credited Abraham’s faith as righteousness. The word credited or accounted in Romans 4 is the same word that Paul uses in Romans 6:11 for how we should consider ourselves as dead to sin. Another translation may say that we should reckon ourselves as dead to sin. Again, this is using the language of an accounting ledger where we reconcile accounts. When God reconciles His Righteousness Ledger, He sees Abraham’s faith, your faith, and credits Jesus’ righteousness to the bottom line.
Application
Believer, you, too should reconcile your own account and realize that Jesus’ righteousness is right there on the bottom line! Don’t forget that you have been set free from sin’s reign. You have died to sin and now you’re living a new, free life in Christ. Reckon yourself as dead to sin and alive to Christ.
Don’t turn back to the desires that once controlled you. Realize that what God has done for you in Jesus is so much more valuable, attractive, and satisfying than anything sin ever hoped to offer you.
Don’t live on the wages of sin.
Instead, receive the free gift of God’s grace.
After posting Saturday’s devotional, I realized that my picture of God’s Righteousness Ledger was wrong. I have corrected it on the original post but wanted to make sure that my subscribers saw the corrected version of the picture. And I have a few more things to say about it.
The original version of the picture:
The updated version of the picture:
My reason for updating the picture is that Abraham’s faith — and our faith — is not unlimited. But when we put our faith in God’s Promise, He credits Jesus’ unlimited righteousness to our account.
Application
You don’t have to have a lot of faith; you just need to have faith. Faith is your response to God’s activity. Believer, when you were given new life in the Spirit, you were able to trust God to make good on His promises. And because you responded to God’s activity, God credited the unlimited righteousness of Jesus to your account on His Righteousness Ledger.
“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” (Ephesians 2:8–9, ESV)
Note the six things that Paul is driving home in just two verses:
- Grace is undeserved favor.
- You have been saved through faith. (passive on your part — something that happened to you — and done in the past)
- This salvation is not of anything you have
done, or will do — or can do. - Salvation is God’s free gift.
- It’s not of works. No one can do anything to gain salvation or contribute to salvation, otherwise, salvation wouldn’t be grace, but wages.
- Because salvation is a free gift of God despite what you have done (or will do) you have nothing to be proud of, to boast of, to brag of. You were no more deserving of salvation than anyone else who ever lived.
Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!
2 Corinthians 9:15 (CSB)
Today’s Bible reading begins one of my favorite books of the Bible: Paul’s letter to the Romans. Paul begins his Magnum Opus Systematic Theology by laying out the gospel message with a description of man’s descent from the time of Creation to his day — and to our day.
Paul says that God’s wrath is already being revealed against ungodliness because mankind has been able to clearly see God’s revealed glory, and yet refused to acknowledge God’s existence. He wrote this around AD 57. And yet, little has changed.
When the Jewish people cried out to the prophet Samuel for a king (1Samuel 8), he warned them that they didn’t need a king, since God was their king. The people said they wanted to be like other nations and to do that, they needed a king. The people kept asking Samuel for a king until he gave them what they asked
In Romans 1, Paul says that God gave the people what they wanted. And the very thing that they wanted became their judgment.
Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man, birds, four-footed animals, and reptiles. Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man, birds, four-footed animals, and reptiles. Therefore God delivered them over in the desires of their hearts to sexual impurity, so that their bodies were degraded among themselves. They exchanged the truth of God for a
lie, and worshiped and served what has been created instead of the Creator, who is praised forever. Amen.
They exchanged the truth of God for alie, and worshiped and served what has been created instead of the Creator, who is praised forever. Amen.
For thisreason God delivered them over to disgraceful passions. Their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. The men in the same way also left natural relations with women and were inflamed in their lust for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the appropriate penalty of their error.
And because they did not think it worthwhile to acknowledge God, God delivered them over to a corrupt mind so that they do what is not right. They are filled with all unrighteousness, evil, greed, and wickedness. They are full of envy, murder, quarrels, deceit, and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, arrogant, proud, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, senseless, untrustworthy, unloving, and unmerciful. Romans 1:22–31 (CSB)
Finally, Paul complete his description of God’s judgment against Fallen Mankind:
Although they know God’s just sentence—that those who practice such things deserve to die—they not only do
them, but even applaud others who practice them. Romans 1:32 (CSB)
Paul
Even in my lifetime, I have witnessed this descent played out in society’s
Sexually confused, they abused and defiled one another, women with women, men with men—all lust, no love. And then they paid for it, oh, how they paid for it—emptied of God and love, godless and loveless wretches. Romans 1:27 (The Message)
Here in verse 27, Paul is referring to Isaiah’s warning:
Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness, who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. Isaiah 5:20 (CSB)
Application
You may not have personally participated in, approved, or encouraged other people to commit the sins that Paul spells out so clearly. But Mankind has. And America has. We, believers, are at least partially to blame for society’s sinful demise. We have not been the salt and light that we are called to be. (Matthew 5:13–16)
Believers, we must confess and repent for our own participation in the sins of our culture. And we must beg for God’s forgiveness, grace, and mercy for our nation’s sins. Our only hope of avoiding God’s wrath being poured out on us is to repent and pray. (2Chronicles 7:14)
Pray for God to send a spiritual awakening and revival, unlike anything our nation has ever experienced. Pray for the Holy Spirit to convict believers of their own sin, as well as our sin of silence while the world has gone to hell around them. Pray that pastors will faithfully speak God’s Word and disciple new (and old) believers in the faith. And pray that believers will hear God’s invitation to seek Him with all that they are.
If we don’t pray, no one will. Lost people definitely won’t do it!
Prayer is our job!
Today’s Bible reading includes Jesus’ “Great Commission”. Jesus has spent about three years with his disciples and is commissioning them for their ministry. Grammatically speaking, there is one command with several participles that describe how the command is to play out.
He begins with “As you go”. He assumes that His disciples will go. Because He has all of the authority, He gives them this great commission.
Next is the command to make disciples.
The next set of participles describe how to make disciples:
- by baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son,
and the Holy Spirit, fully identifying them with the Trinity.
- by teaching them to obey Jesus’ teachings. Jesus gave a lot of commands. But in John 13:34–35, He gives them a new command: Love each other. Jesus’ new command wasn’t really new, he was just giving the Great Commandment (Matthew 22:36–40) a new emphasis. In John 13:35, He says that people will recognize His disciples by their love for each other. This isn’t to discount so many other things about them, but their distinctive was to be love. Not an ooey-gooey squishy love, but a real — almost tangible love that Paul describes in 1Corinthians 13:1–13.
That’s it! That’s all it means to make disciples. The Great Commission is simple. But it isn’t easy. Teaching people to obey Jesus’ teachings is a life-long journey.
When Jesus linked teaching with how the command is to be applied, He isn’t talking about taking something from one person’s brain and transferring that to someone else’s brain. In the New Testament times, a disciple wasn’t just a student of a teacher. A disciple was a learner, much like an apprentice under a mentor who poured his life into the apprentice’s life.
Jesus’ commission isn’t to get people to make decisions. The commission is to make disciples. There is a world of difference between these two!
Unfortunately, a lot of leaders in the church at large don’t get this. It’s much easier to get someone to “bow your head and repeat after me” than it is to make a disciple. Decision-making is very quick. Disciplemaking takes time. Unfortunately, churches are full of decision-makers, and lacking on disciples.
In 2Timothy 2:2 Paul adds another dimension to
Application
Have you ever been discipled? Maybe you need to talk with your pastor about growing deeper in your faith by meeting regularly with a more mature believer who can pour his/her spiritual life into yours.
Have you made a disciple? The commission wasn’t just for Jesus’ immediate disciples. The commission is for us, too!
I once heard someone wisely say that every Christian needs a Paul (a more mature believer who is
Indeed!
Two words emerge from today’s Bible reading from Matthew 18:SIN and FORGIVENESS.
Jesus talks about causing a child to stumble and says that it would better for the person who causes this offense to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied to his neck.
Next, He says that if your eye or hand causes you to sin, it would better to pluck it out and cut it off because it would be better to enter the Kingdom of Heaven maimed than to suffer in Hell because you didn’t deal with your sin.
Later, He emphasizes the importance of restoration when someone sins. Note, he says restoration and not punishment. Relationships are very important: relationships between people and people’s relationship with God. (Matthew 18:35, Matthew 6:14-15)
Finally, Jesus turns to the need to repeatedly forgive an offender. The math of 70×7 works out to 490, but Jesus’ emphasis is not on counting how many times you forgive, but that you forgive.
Application
The bottom line of Matthew 18 is the seriousness of sin. Sin is bad. Really bad. And we should do whatever it takes to avoid it. John Piper quotes Puritan John Owen when he said that if you are not killing sin, it is killing you. Owen wrote a book, The Mortification of Sin in Believers based on Romans 8:13.
The second main point of Matthew 18 is the seriousness of forgiveness. As bad as it is when people sin against you, it is equally bad when you withhold forgiveness from them — whether or not they ask for forgiveness.
Someone wisely said that withholding forgiveness is like drinking poison, hoping the offender gets sick. They may not even be aware that they sinned against you. Withholding forgiveness will eat you alive, so don’t do it. It will shortcircuit your walk with Christ. And that isn’t worth it, regardless of what the other person has done to you.
Now hear me out: the fact that someone sinned against you is bad. Really bad. Forgiveness does not respond by saying, “That’s ok.” It’s not OK! But we are called to release that person to let God deal with their sin. And if you really want to go deep in forgiving the other person, ask God to not hold this sin against them when they stand before the Judgment.
God is infinitely better at dealing with sin
than you will ever hope to be.
And yet, God is infinitely better at forgiving sin
than you will ever hope to be.